There are many situations where several people would like to share a single computer. For example, a home may have a single personal computer (PC) that is shared by the family members. If these users desire a unique configuration, privacy, and/or security for their applications and data files, such a shared computing environment may not adequately accommodate them.
For example, with most operating systems, the users share a single workspace. Unfortunately, doing so does not allow personalization of their workspace or security of data between users. In certain operating systems, users may separate their data into multiple “profiles” or “accounts”. One of the drawbacks to this scheme is that if one user is using the computer and a another user would like to access their own files, the first user would have to close all open applications in order for the other user to log on to the system and access their data. Thus, the first user's application state is lost. In addition to losing the application state, the user is inconvenienced because of the time involved with closing down the prior user's state and re-establishing the new user's state.
Certain solutions, such as, for example, the “Identity Manager” available in Microsoft Outlook Express version 5.0, allow certain user data to be shared among separate users without losing all of the application's states during a user switch. However, the Identity Manager manages only a small subset of the user's data. Text documents, for example, are not stored separately for each user. Furthermore, there is little workspace personalization available and the user data is not secured for other user access.
Consequently, there is a need for an improved methods and arrangements for use in multiple user computing environments. Preferably, the methods and arrangements will allow for a plurality of separate and concurrent desktops and workspaces within the shared computing environment